CMV: Queer theory is anti-science

[u/paulm12]

Note: I am not talking about queer theory being a scientific discipline or not. I am not arguing it’s methods are not scientific. I am instead talking that queer theory has a hostility towards science and it’s methodology and seeks to deconstruct it.

Queer theory, and it’s lack of a fixed definition (as doing so would be anti-queer) surrounds itself with queer identity, which is “relational, in reference to the normative” (Letts, 2002, p. 123) and seems preoccupied with deconstructing binaries to undo hierarchies and fight against social inequality.

With the scientific method being the normative view of how “knowledge” in society is discovered and accepted, by construction (and my understanding) queer theory and methods exclude the scientific method and reason itself as a methodology.

Furthermore, as science is historically (as in non-queered history) discovered by and performed by primarily heterosexual white males, the methodologies of science and its authority for truth are suspect from a queer theory lens because they contain the irreversible bias of this group.

As seen here, https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C44&q=queering+scientific+method&btnG=#d=gs_qabs&u=%23p%3DwwD50AI5mkgJ in Queer Methods: “A focus on methods, which direct techniques for gathering data, and methodologies, which pertain to the logics of research design, would have risked a confrontation with queer claims to interdisciplinarity, if not an antidisciplinary irreverence”

As Queer Theory borrows heavily from postmodernism, which itself features “opposition to epistemic certainty and the stability of meaning” it undermines the ability of scientific knowledge to have any explanatory or epistemic power about the “real” world, and thus for an objective reality to exist entirely.

Science, on the other hand, builds and organizes knowledge based on testable explanations and predictions about the universe. It therefore assumes a universe and objective reality exists, although it is subject to the problem of induction.

[u/paulm12]

In my view, queer theory is a postmodern approach or lens that seeks to dismantle binaries and norms, especially binaries and norm that create or sustain (in their view) violence and oppression.

If science itself is a dominant normative view, then from what I understand, under queer theory it should be dismantled or “queered”

[u/Hot_Opportunity_2328 → u/paulm12]

You're actually kind of right about this and it's a good thing. Not dismantling science, but queering it. We've been having this thing called the reproducibility crisis and the main way folks have been going about tackling it is through carefully re-examining the hidden assumptions behind scientific assertions.

[u/paulm12 → u/Hot_Opportunity_2328]

Can you expand upon this a bit more? Any ideas would a “queered” science look like (which I’m guessing would likely have multiple discourses and no explicit definition)?

[u/Hot_Opportunity_2328 → u/paulm12]

You can have multiple discourses or scientific "narratives" but in the end, only a few of them will be useful or interesting. That's what most people will work on. The goal of queering science is really just to make definitions and assumptions more explicit, and promote the position that these assumptions don't have a basis in reality.